 |
| Titel |
Age structure and disturbance legacy of North American forests |
| VerfasserIn |
Y. Pan, J. M. Chen, R. Birdsey, K. McCullough, L. He, F. Deng |
| Medientyp |
Artikel
|
| Sprache |
Englisch
|
| ISSN |
1726-4170
|
| Digitales Dokument |
URL |
| Erschienen |
In: Biogeosciences ; 8, no. 3 ; Nr. 8, no. 3 (2011-03-18), S.715-732 |
| Datensatznummer |
250005573
|
| Publikation (Nr.) |
 copernicus.org/bg-8-715-2011.pdf |
|
|
|
|
|
| Zusammenfassung |
| Most forests of the world are recovering from a past disturbance. It is well
known that forest disturbances profoundly affect carbon stocks and fluxes in
forest ecosystems, yet it has been a great challenge to assess disturbance
impacts in estimates of forest carbon budgets. Net sequestration or loss of
CO2 by forests after disturbance follows a predictable pattern with
forest recovery. Forest age, which is related to time since disturbance, is
a useful surrogate variable for analyses of the impact of disturbance on
forest carbon. In this study, we compiled the first continental forest age
map of North America by combining forest inventory data, historical fire
data, optical satellite data and the dataset from NASA's Landsat Ecosystem
Disturbance Adaptive Processing System (LEDAPS) project. A companion map of
the standard deviations for age estimates was developed for quantifying
uncertainty. We discuss the significance of the disturbance legacy from the
past, as represented by current forest age structure in different regions of
the US and Canada, by analyzing the causes of disturbances from land
management and nature over centuries and at various scales. We also show how
such information can be used with inventory data for analyzing carbon
management opportunities. By combining geographic information about forest
age with estimated C dynamics by forest type, it is possible to conduct a
simple but powerful analysis of the net CO2 uptake by forests, and the
potential for increasing (or decreasing) this rate as a result of direct
human intervention in the disturbance/age status. Finally, we describe how
the forest age data can be used in large-scale carbon modeling, both for
land-based biogeochemistry models and atmosphere-based inversion models, in
order to improve the spatial accuracy of carbon cycle simulations. |
| |
|
| Teil von |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|